Elizabeth Strout: By the Book

March 28, 2013

The author of “The Burgess Boys” and “Olive Kitteridge” thinks the president should read Barbara Pym to give him “a few minutes to completely relax.”

Where and when do you like to read?

For years I did most of my reading on the F train between Brooklyn and Manhattan. I had long commutes, and I read tons of books on that train; I loved it. Now I’m not on the subway for such long stretches of time, so I do a lot of reading at home. We have a great couch. Every person who sits on that couch says it’s a great couch. When I travel — except for cars and buses because I’ll get sick — I read as soon as I sit down; it’s very helpful. There’s something about being in the private world of a book that is intensified by the bustle of the “real” world right next to it.

Are you a rereader? What book do you find yourself returning to again and again?

I do reread, kind of obsessively, partly for the surprise of how the same book reads at a different point in life, and partly to have the sense of returning to an old friend. I go through phases. For a while I was rereading the Russians quite a bit, and then I thought: Well, there’s a time issue here, I better stop this. I also reread Edith Wharton and John Cheever and Alice Munro and William Trevor, always William Trevor. Last summer I reread Hemingway. It was very strange: I felt like I’d never read “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” even though I had. I absolutely loved it.

What’s the best book you’ve read about Maine?

“The Meddybemps Letters,” by William Pattangall. It came out in the early 20th century, and it’s quite arch, very funny. Pattangall was to become chief justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court; but earlier, he’d pretend to be a plow salesman and go to small towns and pick up what was happening around Maine that way, then write it up. It also includes a Hall of Fame where he wrote satirical sketches of legislators and other public figures. They’re really, really funny, but the voice has that inimitable Puritan hyper — criticality. Dry, oh my God, so dry.

What books might we be surprised to find on your shelves?

Medical stuff. Science essays. Is that surprising? Probably not that surprising. Maybe surprising that the love letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning are next to my bed. (It surprises me, kind of.) But she was so high strung and overwrought that I find it very relaxing to read her. She writes sort of hysterically to him that a woman just paid her a visit and talked to her for three hours. I get it.

Where do you get your books? Do you have a favorite bookstore or library?

When I want a book I usually want it right away, so if I’m in New York I’ll go into the first bookstore I pass by. When I’m in Maine I go to our local bookstore, Gulf of Maine Books, and if they don’t have it, they order it for me and it comes in a couple of days.

Which novels have had the most impact on you as a writer? Is there a particular book that made you want to write?

It’s hard to know what novels have had the most impact on me as a writer. An example: I remember in my early 20s reading “Sons and Lovers” and feeling very excited and thinking, O.K., this is getting at it, this is doing something amazing, I want to see how he does that. Many years later when I reread it, I didn’t feel that way, and that was puzzling, because it had really thrilled me, thinking what a writer could do. So it has to do with where I am, whether or not something has a big impact on me, and how do we ever know where we are? If you see what I mean.

I don’t think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.

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Elizabeth StroutCreditIllustration by Jillian Tamaki

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?

Barbara Pym’s “Some Tame Gazelle.” I mean, what a job! You want to think of this guy as having a few minutes to completely relax. If that’s not his cup of tea, he could chase it down with Richard Yates, maybe “The Easter Parade.”

What were your favorite books as a child? Do you have a favorite character or hero from those books?

Millay’s poetry for kids— I read that a lot. I don’t remember liking many children’s books, but in third grade I read a book called “The Pink Maple House,” and I loved that book with my whole heart. I think it was about two girls with a really nice mother who move to a new house and meet a girl named Tilly who had a strange mother and the girls made fun of her until the nice mother made them stop and then they all became friends. I think maybe there was a house fire too, something dramatic. And sandwiches. And the maple tree. It’s hard to express how much I loved that book, what it meant to me. Later I had an antique book finder get a copy and I gave it to my daughter when she was in third grade and she thought it was really boring.

I was 6 when Updike’s “Pigeon Feathers” came out, and probably 8 or 9 when I read a paperback version I found in the living room. It was a wonderful, mysterious experience. I understood there was a secret world of grown-ups and it was written about. This was huge.

What does your personal book collection look like? Do you organize your books in any particular way?

Oh, I wish I organized my books. But I don’t. I’m not an organized person. The best I can do is put the books I really like in one sort of general area, and poetry in another. I do use books for furniture, meaning I have different piles with lamps on top, and this works nicely. One good thing about having books all over the place is that when I go looking for one I find all sorts of others along the way.

Do you have a standby cookbook? What books do you keep in the kitchen?

In 10th grade my geometry teacher asked me if I had the “joy of cooking” and I said not really. It was years before I knew it was a book. I’m a terrible cook. Friends and family have tried to help me out, so I have a little collection of cookbooks in the kitchen — and also, for some reason, Graham Greene books — but my favorite cookbook is handmade for me by an old friend, with cutout pictures, laminated, and big notes: Elizabeth: This is what you look for in the poultry section of the grocery store.

And on your coffee tables?

Newspapers, magazines, books, mail. . . . The art books that you think of as belonging on a coffee table are actually on the floor beside the coffee table: Diane Arbus, Edward Hopper.

If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know?

I’d like to meet William Trevor. I’d like to sit with him in a pub. We wouldn’t have to talk a whole lot, just kind of hang out. What I’d like to know? If he smokes.

If you could meet any character from literature, who would it be?

Dick Diver from “Tender Is the Night.”

What do you plan to read next?

The Italian writer Elena Ferrante. I just read about her work and it seems like it might be scarily honest, so I want to check that out.